MovieChat Forums > The Clangers (1969) Discussion > What does everyone think of the Revival?

What does everyone think of the Revival?

posted 9 years ago by Ray_BLOODY_Purchase
3 replies | jump to latest

I wasn't too sure with the initial special...seemed to be more patronising with none of the charm, but now that I've seen the proper new show, I quite like it. It certainly doesn't have everything the original did, and I'm quite aware I'm watching a kiddy's show, whereas with the original it was one of those things that often slipped my mind. I think the narration is a bit more over-the-top, and not as short and simple as the original, where most of the dialogue was simply left to our heads with only big plot-elements narrated to us.

The settings are lovely, though - while still being true to the Clanger style.

All in all, it's good, but I think I'll be rewatching series 1-2 more often than the long awaited series 3.

::in the room with no doors, a faceless boy playing with makeup...
I love him from this mirror...::

[–] Ray_BLOODY_Purchase 9 years ago

I also have to add it's downright criminal it took until Ep 4 to get a proper Froglets appearance.

::in the room with no doors, a faceless boy playing with makeup...
I love him from this mirror...::

[–] Russell62 8 years ago

I think the revival is OK but one thing puzzles me. Why are the clangers' names all abbreviated? Tiny Clanger becomes just Tiny and so on. I wonder why the writers felt that change was needed?

[–] combatreview 8 years ago

>>>All in all, it's good, but I think I'll be rewatching series 1-2 more often than the long awaited series 3.

I'm afraid I have to agree. There's much that's good and lovely about the new series, but as you say there's a slightly patronising tone creeping in.

Moreover, and as weird as this will sound, it feels like the new series was made for kids. What I mean by that is that there's an element of talking down which I don't think was ever there in the original show. For example - the very first sentence uttered in the very first episode refers to 'a myriad of stars'. Difficult to imagine the new show deciding to challenge - or expand the vocabulary of - young viewers today like that. Likewise, there's a sense of poetry to that old narration that is now gone in the new one.

More seriously, there's a real sense of... darkness... strangeness... mystery... alien-ness... in the original that is now gone from the new show. The sky is night blue instead of void-dark, and the clangers have been defined into a specific and commonplace family unit. Lots of little gaps of strangeness have been filled in with normality, much to the detriment of the show's tone, in my view. Oh, needless to say - compare the music on the show (which is perfectly fine) with Vernon Eliot's mysterious, haunting work on the original - difficult to imagine a contemporary kids show having a score so avant-garde or haunting...

Still - Clangers is Clangers.